Days of heavy rain in southern France triggered flash floods and severe river flooding, killing at least five people and forcing the evacuations of thousands.
"The culprit was a stuck upper-level low over the western Mediterranean Sea cutoff from the main jet stream," weather.com senior meteorologist Jonathan Erdman. "While this first low will weaken and slide east, another closed low aloft may form over the Iberian peninsula later this week, bringing more locally heavy rain to the south of France later this week."
Erdman said that, in just a few days, some areas in the region experienced rainfall totals more than double their average for the entire month.
"Perpignan, France picked up 8.75 inches (222 millimeters) of rain from November 28 to Devember 1, including 5.15 inches of rain on Nov. 30, alone, " said Erdman. "This one-day total is more than double the average November monthly rain, there (2.3 inches)."
And it was just to the north of Perpignan, along the banks of the Agly River, where French officials started evacuating residents. The Guardian reports that 2,800 people were evacuated along the swollen river Sunday.
A similar scene was playing out in the communities surrounding Perignan, like Argelès-sur-Mer, Le Barcarès and Canet-en-Roussillon, where more than 500 people had been evacuated near flooded bodies of water.
Unfortunately, the multi-day flooding event has already claimed at least five lives, the most recent of which was a 73-year-old man who died of cardiac complications after his car became stuck in a flooded roadway, the French edition of The Local reports.
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